China
CHINA China is located in east Asia. FOOD Chinese cuisine is highly diverse, drawing on several millennia of culinary history. The dynastic emperors of ancient China were known to host banquets with over 100 dishes served at a time, employing countless imperial kitchen staff and concubines to prepare the food. Such royal dishes gradually became a part of wider Chinese culture. China's staple food is rice, but the country is also well known for its meat dishes. Spices are endemic to Chinese cuisine. Numerous foreign offshoots of Chinese food, such as Hong Kong cuisine and American Chinese food, have emerged in the various nations which play host to the Chinese diaspora. CULTURE Since ancient times, Chinese culture has been heavily influenced by Confucianism and conservative philosophies. For much of the country's dynastic era, opportunities for social advancement could be provided by high performance in the prestigious Imperial examinations, which were instituted in 605 AD to help the Emperor select skilful bureaucrats. The literary emphasis of the exams affected the general perception of cultural refinement in China, such as the belief that calligraphy and literati painting were higher forms of art than dancing or drama. A number of more authoritarian and rational strains of thought were also influential, with Legalism being a prominent example. There was often conflict between the philosophies – for instance, the individualistic Song Dynasty neo-Confucians believed that Legalism departed from the original spirit of Confucianism. Examinations and a culture of merit remain greatly valued in China today. In recent years, a number of New Confucians have claimed that modern democratic ideals and human rights are compatible with traditional Confucian values. The first leaders of the People's Republic of China were born into the traditional imperial order, but were influenced by the May Fourth Movement and reformist ideals. They sought to change some traditional aspects of Chinese culture, such as rural land tenure, sexism, and the Confucian system of education, while preserving others, such as the family structure and culture of obedience to the state. Some observers see the period following the establishment of the PRC in 1949 as a continuation of traditional Chinese dynastic history, while others claim that the Communist Party's rule has damaged the foundations of Chinese culture, especially through political movements such as the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, where many aspects of traditional culture were destroyed, having been denounced as 'regressive and harmful' or 'vestiges of feudalism'. Many important aspects of traditional Chinese morals and culture, such as Confucianism, Chinese art, literature, and performing arts like Peking opera, were altered to conform to government policies and propaganda at the time. Today, the Chinese government has accepted numerous elements of traditional Chinese culture as being integral to Chinese society. With the rise of Chinese nationalism and the end of the Cultural Revolution, various forms of traditional Chinese art, literature, music, film, fashion and architecture have seen a vigorous revival, and folk and variety art in particular have sparked interest nationally and even worldwide. Prior to the beginning of maritime Sino-European trade in the 16th century, medieval China and the European West were linked by the Silk Road, which was a key route of cultural as well as economic exchange. Artifacts from the history of the Road, as well as from the natural history of the Gobi desert, are displayed in the Silk Route Museum in Jiuquan. Religion Main article: Religion in China The Temple of Heaven, a large complex of Taoist buildings in Beijing, where the Emperor was said to commune with Heaven.Freedom of religion is guaranteed by China's constitution, although religious organizations which lack official approval can be subject to state persecution. An accurate number of religious adherents is hard to obtain because of a lack of official data, but there is a general consensus that religious belief has been enjoying a resurgence in China since the late 1980s. A 1998 survey by Adherents.com found that 59% (over 700 million) of the population was non-religious. A later survey, conducted in 2007, found that there were 300 million religious believers in China, constituting 23% of the population, as distinct from the official figure of 100 million. Despite the surveys' varying results, most agree that China's traditional religions—Buddhism, Taoism, and Chinese folk religions—are the dominant faiths. According to various sources, Buddhism in China accounts for between 660 million (~50% of the population) and over 1 billion (~80%), while Taoists number as many as 400 million (~30%).However, because of the fact that one person may subscribe to two or more of these traditional beliefs simultaneously, and the difficulty in clearly differentiating Buddhism, Taoism, and Chinese folk religions, there is likely a strong degree of overlap in the number of adherents of these religions. In addition, some who subscribe to Buddhism and Taoism follow their philosophies in principle but stop short of believing in any kind of deity or divinity. . By 1921, Harbin had a Russian population of around 100,000, feeding the growth of Christianity in the city.Most Chinese Buddhists are merely nominal adherents, because only a small proportion of the population (around 8% or 100 million) may have taken the formal step of going for refuge. Even then, it is still difficult to estimate accurately the number of Buddhists, because they do not have congregational memberships and often do not participate in public ceremonies. Mahayana Buddhism (''Dacheng'') and its subsets Pure Land (Amidism), Tiantai and Chán (better known in English by its Japanese pronunciation Zen) are the most widely practiced denominations of Buddhism. Other forms, such as Theravada and Tibetan Buddhism, are practiced largely by ethnic minorities along the geographic fringes of the Chinese mainland. Christianity was first introduced to China during the Tang Dynasty, with the arrival of Nestorian Christianity in 635 AD. This was followed by Franciscan missionaries in the 13th century, Jesuits in the 16th century, and finally Protestants in the 19th century. Of China's minority religions, Christianity is one of the fastest-growing. The total number of Christians is difficult to determine, as many belong to unauthorized house churches, but estimates of their number have ranged from 40 million (3% of the total population) to 54 million (4%) to as many as 130 million (10%). Official government statistics put the number of Christians at 25 million, but these count only members of officially sanctioned church bodies. China is believed to now have the world's second-largest evangelical Christian population—behind only the United States—and is also experiencing a surge in mainstream Christian publishing. In 2011, it was reported that more people attended Sunday church services in China than in all of Europe. Islam in China dates to a mission in 651, only 18 years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims initially came to China for trade, becoming prominent in the trading ports of the Song Dynasty. Later, Muslims such as Zheng He, Lan Yu and Yeheidie'erding became influential in government circles, and Nanjing became an important center of Islamic study. Accurate statistics on China's Muslim population are hard to find; most estimates give a figure of between 20 and 30 million Muslims (1.5% to 2% of the total population). China also plays host to numerous minority religions, including Hinduism, Dongbaism, Bön, and a number of more modern religions and sects (particularly Xiantianism). In July 1999, the Falun Gong spiritual practice was officially banned by the authorities, and many international organizations have criticized the government's recent treatment of Falun Gong. There are no reliable estimates of the number of Falun Gong practitioners in China,although informal estimates have given figures as high as 70 million PEOPLE LANDSAPES COUNTRYSIDE=